When The Sun Goes Down, We See
Creative Runway Direction for NYFW Show and Party
For Heavensgate (2023)
From The Immense Journey
Role:
- Executive Producer
- Event Creative Direction
- Show Direction
For this runway, I was really interested in the relation ship between the audience and the models themselves. I had seen other shows where models step out from the crowd and do their walk, but since we were throwing a party on top of a show, I really wanted to explore what it meant to "party" for NYFW- what it meant to celebrate the things we wear and why we do it. The only answer I could really come up with was: we aren't celebrating the clothes at all- were celebrating ourselves. With that idea came the natural conclusion to what I needed to do.
The concept I developed was for guests to enter into the space (123 Bowery) as though it was just a warehouse party: low lights, DJ blaring techno, open floor, cheap drinks, etc. As the crowd filled up the room, magically a set of lights on the floor would turn on outlining the runway. The music would change and models would step out onto the runway from the crowd, do their walk and re-enter again. As the final model walked, the runway lights would turn off again, and the last two models would pull the crowd back in, reinviting them to dance again.
A couple challenges needed to be overcome for this one:
- Designing the runway lights so they weren't noticeable
- Running through 50 looks and hiding those looks in the crowd
- Coordinating models to arrive in their places without the crowd noticing
- Enticing the audience to return to dancing afterwards
We decided to use a series of outdoor flatlyimg LED streips to shape the runway fastened down by clearwrap and spike tape that matched the flooring. It became clear early on that before the runway appeared, lights would have to be down low enough to hide the floorlights and interspersing the models into the crowd. We divided the 50 models into two group and I coordinated a rehearsal in which two models stepped onto he runway at once and encircled the runway before stepping back into the crowd. This required us to have a stage manager and two stage hands calling the show and sending everyone on at the right time.
Finally it was important that we got the audience to reengage after the runway turned off so we encouraged the last two models to physically pull audience members by hand into the runway and begin dancing.
Here’s a clip of the rehearsal:
And here is a clip of the final show:
Gallery:
